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This is an excerpt from "Some “Climate
Change and a New Archaeology".
Read the complete column in the Central
States Archaeological Societies 2024
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2025
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Ötzi the Iceman. Reconstruction of Ötzi
mummy as shown in Prehistory Museum of Quinson, Alpes-de-Haut
Provence, France |
Otzi (4th millennium BCE), the iceman found in the melting glacial
ice of the Italian Alps in 1991, is ushering in a new field of archaeology
dubbed glacial archaeology, though the label is too restrictive to
delineate the archaeological revelations being made by climate change.
Glaciers are melting and receding, revealing artifacts, bodies, and
even viruses frozen deep in the ice for millennia (Solis-Moreira 2023).
Otzi is the dean of climate change archaeology, and it is occurring
in more environments than glaciers and ice fields.
Some 10% of the earth is covered in glacial ice, preserving trapped
objects when they first froze. Glaciers surrendering their prehistoric
vaults are occurring world-wide, including the Alps, Norway, Siberia
and Yellowstone National Park. Artifacts recently revealed by glacial
retreats include arrows with feather fletching and hafted lithic
points (1000 BCE), iron age skis (700 CE), prehistoric animals (e.g.,
wooly mammoths (28,000 BCE), penguins (1200 CE), and other species
of prehistoric interest. Glaciers and ice patches have also yielded
organic artifacts – wood, textiles and vegetable fiber, including
baskets. The icy surrender of such diverse artifacts is insightful,
but the melting snow and ice offer poor substrate or stratification
for research and can leave cultural materials from different epochs
together. Finally, archaeologists must be prompt in surveying melting
glacial surfaces routinely or cultural materials may be washed away
(Solis-Moreira 2023).
Global warming is not the only condition that exposes and threatens
archaeological materials. Climate change is now causing sea rise
and inordinate flooding that threatens archaeological sites, known
and unknown, on coastal low lands (Whigham 2023). Extreme high tides
put coastal sites under water for prolonged periods and contribute
to the deterioration of subsurface materials and features, compromising
the knowledge such prehistoric sites might yield. The damage goes
unseen but is happening, nonetheless.
Hurricanes are intensifying in frequency and strength, also a result
of climate change, bringing with them damaging erosion, tidal surges
and winds, all with the potential to expose cultural materials, including
burials of coastal sites. Hurricane Nicole, in 2022, unearthed at
least six burials on Chastain Beach, Hutchinson Island, Florida.
Locally, it became known as skull beach, an attribute made by the
salvage archaeology done there. Hurricanes Sandy (2012) and Dorian
(2019) exposed similar graves (Skinner 2022). Many unknown prehistoric
sites are lost without recognition or acknowledgement.
Climate change is ,,.
Read the complete column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2024
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2025 |
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